


One for the Money, Two for the Show

by sifuamelia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Acxa & Keith (Voltron) are Siblings, Alternate Universe - College/University, Communication Failure, Denial of Feelings, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Siblings, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Keith/Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Marriage of Convenience, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Mutual Pining, Past Character Death, Sick Shiro (Voltron), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 20:56:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15397284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifuamelia/pseuds/sifuamelia
Summary: “You wanna get married.”“Yes."“To… me."“Yes.”“But… you don't like me.”“Well, I need money more than I don't like you, so… Whaddya say, buddy?”---College senior Lance McClain suddenly needs additional financial aid to support him through his final semester. The most logical thing to do about it?Duh — convince his cantankerous lab partner to marry him.





	One for the Money, Two for the Show

Lance McClain hadn’t meant to marry Keith Kogane. It just sort of… happened.

If you’d told him a week ago that he was going to marry Keith, you’d have barely finished your sentence before he’d doubled-over in disbelieving laughter. Because Keith, he’d explain to you, is his rival. His sworn enemy. An insufferable, know-it-all prick, who’s seemingly incapable of smiling and dresses like Hot Topic on whippets.

 _Besides,_ he’d add, _when it comes to marriage,_ _I’m holding out for The One. You know,_ ** _The_** _One. And whomever they are, they **definitely** aren't out there trying to rock a mullet like it’s 1985 all over again. Because I deserve better than that._

Too bad that just seven days later, though, he’d be going back on his promises to the universe in their entirety.

And then—

Well. It really is needless to say that a sham marriage between two (allegedly) bitter rivals is bound to spiral out of control _somehow_.

And that’s exactly what this one did.

 

* * *

 

**_IF YOU’RE READING THIS, YOU CAN READ…_ **

 

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Guys.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** I’ve got a problem.

 **PaniniHead:** Is it your username?

 **TokenFemale:** He isn’t going to change it, Hunk.

 **TokenFemale:** We’ve been over this.

 **PaniniHead:** Can’t blame a guy for trying.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Hello?

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Anybody?

 **TokenFemale:** Ah, yes.

 **TokenFemale:** Lance.

 **TokenFemale:** You have a question?

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Ha, ha.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Very funny.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Seriously, though.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** This is a crisis moment.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** A Code Red™, if you will.

 **PaniniHead:** ?

 **TokenFemale:** Don’t worry, Hunk.

 **TokenFemale:** He probably just has another weird bug bite or something.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** Okay, first of all—

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** It was turning purple and oozing stuff and I didn’t want to die.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** So thanks for caring, Pidge.

 **TokenFemale:** You’re welcome.

 **HunksSkinnyBitch:** And second of all…

 **PaniniHead:** …

 **PaniniHead:** Lance?

 **PaniniHead:** You’ve stopped typing.

 **PaniniHead:** Everything alright, amigo?

 **PaniniHead:** Lance?

 

* * *

 

“…Whoa.”

“Yeah,” Lance says dully into his lap. “‘Whoa.’ That’s… That’s definitely one way to put it.”

He can feel a hand settling hesitantly atop his shoulder, and he doesn’t need to look up to know that it belongs to his childhood best friend/current roommate. He’d recognize the familiar weight, the comforting pressure, with his eyes closed. In the deepest darkness of the deepest darkest subterranean cavern on the planet.

(Which would be the Krubera Cave, which is in Georgia, which isn’t the Georgia that’s in the United States — Hunk’s a geology minor, and he’d made sure that Lance knows of this. “You never know what’s gonna come up at trivia night,” he’d said solemnly. “Now, let’s move onto covering some of the more subtle differences between igneous and metamorphic rocks.”)

“Lance, I…” Hunk sucks at the inside of his lip until it pops audibly — a subconscious expression of extreme agitation, a holdover from their youth. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

Lance shrugs the other boy’s hand off. Because so is everybody else. He’s heard so many apologies in the past twelve hours that the word “sorry” has become absolutely meaningless in his ringing ears, completely numb in his swirling brain.

Hunk shifts slightly away from him on the saggy couch that squats in the middle of their living room (if you could call it that — their on-campus apartment is the size of a shoebox, so they're essentially just pretending), and Lance knows that he’s hurt him. But frighteningly enough, he doesn’t care one bit. At least, not right now, not in this headspace, not in this moment. It’ll come back to haunt him, for sure. And he’ll make it up to Hunk then.

 _If he’s still around, that is,_ that tiny little voice, the one that’s always lurking in some shadowy corner of his mind, whispers unbidden.

“Look, Lance,” Pidge says from his other side, her chirpy voice unusually soft. “I don’t think you’re gonna like this, not one bit, but maybe you should, y’know…” She trails off uncomfortably.

His head whips up. He glares at her. And Pidge, unintimidate-able, fearless Pidge Holt, shrinks back just a little bit deeper into the overstuffed cushions.

“What?” he hisses. “ _You_ think I should go, too?”

“N-No, I don’t! It’s, it’s just, logically—“

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” he reminds her, voice breaking slightly as he jabs at her bony shoulder with an accusatory pointer finger. “You’re supposed to be my _friend_ —“

“Lance,” Hunk cuts in warningly, reaching around his back to smack his hand out of Pidge’s personal space. “We _are_ your friends, we _want_ to help you, don’t be like—“

“Don’t be like _what_?” Lance hollers, leaping up from the couch in a sudden burst of brazen anger. He can feel it coursing through his body, his veins, like spurts of molten, red-hot lava, spitting frantically from the gaping mouth of a smoking volcano. “Don’t be like, not over my dad dying? And still upset over it?" He shakes his head. He shakes _everything_.

"And now, to add even more fucking insult to fucking injury, you two — my supposed BFFs — think it's best for me to  _leave_?“

Hunk and Pidge are staring up at him, eyes wide with shock… and something else, something new, something _scary_. Hunk’s are beginning to leak, tears that Lance doesn’t think that he deserves starting to form at their corners.

“You guys realize, it’s all over for me,” Lance states. Suddenly, he feels eerily calm. As if some kind of supernatural force reached deep inside of him and flicked off his emotional switch.

“N-No, Lance, don’t even go there—“ Pidge protests. Hunk’s face drops heavily into his hands — he heaves out a sob.

“I can’t let Vero suffer for this,” Lance says, a little more quietly than before. “It... It has to be me. I’ve gotta be the one to take the fall.”

“Lance—“

“I’m… I’m going to the lab.” He squares his shoulders, turns on his heel. “Don’t follow me.”

“ _Lance_ —!”

 

* * *

 

Quinn McClain was the one who taught his four children how to ride their bicycles. _Cubanos_ are far more fond of their engine-riddled counterparts, but back in Cahersiveen, the tiny village tucked away in the southwestern-most point of County Kerry, bikes are how everybody get around. The family had only visited Quinn’s childhood home once, around the time of Lance’s twelfth birthday. Ireland is cold and wet, far colder and wetter than Varadero. But most places are far colder and wetter than the beach town where Lance’s parents had settled, made a life for themselves and Lance and his siblings.

Now he’s in college, and it’s like southern Florida was built for biking — low and flat, with nary a hill or any kind of upward tread in site. As Lance pushes off of the curb by the racks outside of his building and begins to pedal (perhaps a little more forcefully than his bike deserves, but his thoughts are so scattered that he doesn't really notice), he wonders offhandedly if his mom still keeps their childhood bikes. In the attic, perhaps? Getting all rusty with disuse and who _knows_ what else—

The very thought of it makes his eyesight begin to blur.

He tells himself that it’s just sweat.

And he keeps on peddling.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, kid,” Rolo says, tone as mild as ever, but with an undercurrent of something just a little bit startled running through it, too. “Didn’t expect to see ya here!”

It’s a completely innocuous comment — Rolo has absolutely _no_ idea how much Lance’s life has changed in the past day — but Lance’s ears are still ringing. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” he practically growls at the lanky post-doc student holding the heavy door open for him.

One of Rolo’s skinny eyebrows arches. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, McClain,” he says bracingly. “It’s just, you don’t really drop in most Sundays. ’S’all I’m saying.”

Lance sets his jaw, but he doesn’t say anything else — he just shoulders past his PI and stomps toward his station…

…which is _unsettlingly_ clean, devoid of all of the littered papers and scattered pens, and general detritus one would expect from a twenty-one year-old’s overused desk. The place that he probably spends most of his academic time (and a good deal of his free time, even), more than any course block or scheduled lab. For the past three years, this cramped little corner of the planetary sciences building has been just as much of a home to him as the shoebox apartment that he and Hunk share. As much of a home as his parents’ place in Miami, even — _The Havana of the U.S.,_ his mom always jokes.

She might be going back to Varadero, though, and taking Luis with her. Vero thinks so, anyway — she'd said as much, over their Skype call this past weekend. Why stay in the States year-round anymore, when all of the people that you have left are somewhere else—?

“Lance.”

Once upon a time, Lance had been in love with a girl named Nyma. She was his first lab partner, ever. Back then, in the one and only Doc Holt’s intro to space sciences seminar, where Rolo was their TA and had seen something like promise in his two young students. They were the only freshmen that he brought onto his research, a project supervised by Holt himself, and Lance had hardly believed his luck. In his eyes, Samuel Holt was a god, Rolo was a beta Mick Jagger, and Nyma… She was _everything_ to him. Brains big enough to build a robot completely from scratch for their gen physics practical exam. Looks worthy of a supermodel’s.

In short, she was _perfect_. The most perfect girl that he’d ever seen in his short, sorry life. (Granted, there aren’t many girls to see at the Garrison to begin with — it's an unfortunate gender imbalance trend that polytechnic institutes nationwide seem to face.)

But these days, Lance has bigger fish to fry than mooning over Nyma. Even if she hadn’t rejected every single one of his advances over the past three years… Well. That’s kind of where that sentence ends.

So he doesn’t feel the least bit reluctant to shoot her a particularly noxious glare. “Did you mess with my desk again?” he asks, not even bothering to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Hello to you, too,” she mutters, thwacking him on the back of the head with what’s probably her rolled-up manual as she passes him by for her own station, utterly impervious to every single one of his frustrations (the ones that are _clearly_ leaking off of his very being like waves of eye-watering stench off of a mound of toxic sludge). Another thing that he’s gotten tired of about her, over the past three years or so — Nyma doesn’t really do emotions. And Lance — Lance (mostly) wears his heart on his sleeve.

“I _told_ you not to mess with my desk,” he says petulantly.

“It was a total pigsty,” she replies frankly, winding one of her long blond pigtails into a neater space bun atop her broad dark forehead. “I was tired of looking at it.”

Normally, Lance could probably whip up a snappy response to this jibe. _Normally_. But he’s running on nothing more than fumes and bitter black coffee (to match his bitter black soul) right now, and the muse of creativity isn’t exactly on his side. All that he think to mutter back is, “Then don’t look at it.”

She’s already sat down in her rolling chair, but she tips back in it to look at him —  _really_ look at him. The kind of look that would’ve made Old Lance’s stomach erupt in a swarm of butterflies... which sounds kind of gross when he _really_  thinks about it.

“You alright, McClain?” she finally — _finally_ — asks, her lazy voice a touch more concerned than usual.

“I’m gonna drop out of school.”

Lance says it before he can stop it. He doesn’t exactly know why — call him dramatic, self-absorbed, even, but he’d rather pull a James Franco and cut off his own arm than milk something for pity.

 _Especially_ something like _this_.

Nyma blinks, _hard_. “Um.”

He sighs, bracing his hands atop his desk so that he doesn't have to meet her liquid-dark eyes. “Look, I appreciate the eloquent nature of your condolences, I really do—”

“Okay, no, Lance, wait just a minute now—“

“—but I’ve got some covariates to analyze and more numbers to crunch—“

“—what’s _that_ supposed to, what’re you saying—!“

“—and Holt wants this data input by Tuesday evening, so—“

“Kid.” Rolo’s hand claps him on the shoulder, and it isn’t unlike Hunk’s, although the PI wears the kinds of rings that Lance can feel even through the thick fabric of his t-shirt. “Knock, knock. Open up.”

Lance twists out of his grasp. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbles.

“Too late,” Rolo says back. He lets Lance go, but when the latter turns around, his PI’s long arms are crossed unusually tightly across his lanky chest. He tips his chin, and the industrial lighting strung above them turns his already pale hair snow white. “I’m worrying.”

Lance’s mind rewinds to his mom’s phone call last night. The financial aid office’s e-mail this morning. Hunk and Pidge’s stunned faces, frozen in the wake of his impromptu outburst. And now, Nyma and Rolo, asking him what's wrong.

Just like his PI had said — it was too late. He's already burst into tears.

 

* * *

 

"That's... That's really fucked-up. Like, fifty shades of fucked-up."

Lance swipes his thumb across the rim of his margarita glass, smearing salt over his lips like a balm before taking a sizable gulp of the sour drink. Even though it's a Sunday evening, the lights of Sal's swirl technicolor overhead, just as usual. It should be a comforting sight — Sal's Place is a fan favorite within Lance's friend group, and some of his best memories from college have happened here. In the booth that he's currently sitting in with Nyma and Rolo, at the tacky bar on the back wall... and maybe a few quick things in the bathrooms, too. Not that he's about to go back down  _that_ memory lane — some memories should stay memories. He's old enough to know that now.

"Tell me about it," he grumbles. Or slurs, maybe. He's never been very good at holding his liquor. "One look at the inheritance documents, and _presto chango_! Financial aid _completely_ gone."

"It's almost Halloween," Rolo remarks disbelievingly. He frowns into his craft beer, the droopy corners of his slack mouth going even droopier. "Holt signed off on your grad request ages ago, I saw the department process your degree requirements and everything. They can't just, like, let you have one more semester?"

"'Fraid not," Lance replies, and decides that licking the salt straight off of the rim of his glass is a far more expedient way of getting drunk. Cut out the middleman that's his finger, and all that. "College... College is like a really bad hooker."

"Come again?" Rolo asks, eyes startled wide. Nyma grins wickedly around a French fry from the apps basket that she ordered.

"Sh-She... She takes yer money, and leaves." Lance slams his palm flat on the slightly sticky table. "Before she's, before she's even finished the j-job!"

Nyma shakes her head solemnly. "What a trashy-ass bitch."

"I kn-know, right?" Lance complains. "Who the fuck does sh-she think she is, anyway—?"

"Howdy, folks." Their waiter's back, and he's got a mean stink-eye. He also looks strangely familiar, but through the blurry veil of his alcohol-induced haze, Lance can't quite place him. "I'm gonna need you three to turn it down a notch."

"Sorry," Nyma apologizes without really apologizing. "We're in mourning."

The guy's expression shifts from poorly disguised annoyance to downright shock — his dark eyebrows, which a thoroughly perplexed Lance determines also look familiar, practically shoot up into his hairline (hard to make out past the messy fringe of his shaggy bangs). "O-Oh, uh, I'm, I'm so sorry, I didn't—!"

"She's kidding," Rolo interrupts hastily, raising his skinny hands in front of his chest in a placating sort of manner. "She doesn't mean, it's not like — It's a long story, but no worries, alright, Keith?"

 _Keith?_ Lance squints up at the waiter. He knows a guy named Keith! Keith, from his geophysics class. Keith, who sits next to him in said geophysics class. Keith, who's his assigned lab partner in—

His vision drops aggressively low on the waiter's body. Beneath the fabric of those tight, _tight_ jeans — yup. Just as Lance had thought. _There's_ the bubble butt that he pretends not to stare at every time his new lab partner gets up from their table to do a supply closet run.

In a move that his inebriated mind believes to be the smoothest pick-up line in the history of mankind, he shouts directly into the waiter's startled face: "Can I please touch your butt?"

The hustle and bustle of the restaurant dies.

Keith blanches.

Nyma cackles.

And Rolo — he pinches at the bridge of his nose and lets out a heavy sigh.

"We'll take the rest of the food to go."

 

* * *

 

"Thanks for bringing him home, guys," Hunk prattles gratefully as he holds the front door to the apartment open wide. "We couldn't get ahold of him all afternoon, we were really worried—"

"You hear that, ya dingus?" Pidge exclaims, flicking Lance on the end of his ski-slope nose. "You freaked us the fuck out! Don't ever do it again, or I'll kill you."

Nyma cocks her head, and Lance can distantly feel the shell of her ear atop his hair. "Killing him sounds kinda counter-intuitive to your concern, Pidge."

"Who asked you, Scientist Barbie?"

"C'mon," Rolo mutters, hefting the slumped-over boy between them into a bit of a more stable position. "Let's set him down somewhere safe." And together, they drag Lance over to the couch.

Hunk almost jumps over its back in his quest to bring his roommate a refreshing glass of water. He kneels down between Lance's slack legs, then hesitantly lays his palms atop the other boy's bony shoulders. "Lance, buddy, pal," he prods gently. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Lance confirms, suddenly feeling rather forlorn. He'd been riding so high back at Sal's. Now, though, he's beginning to crash back to Earth. Back to the reality that's staring him down like a stomping _toro bravo_ , furiously blocking the only exit of what had been a very long and often twisty tunnel. The tunnel is his nearly complete college career at Garrison Polytechnic Institute. And the bull—

By no means does Lance have a photographic memory, but the e-mail that he'd received from the bursar's office this morning is something that he'll never, _ever_ forget.

 

_To Mr. McClain Acosta de la Cruz—_

_We regret to inform you that due to the nature of your updated finances as reported at the start of this fall semester, we can no longer award you the need-based D'Altea Family Foundation Scholarship to cover your necessary fees and dues for the entire duration of the upcoming spring. Please be aware that to maintain your spot as a continuing student this spring, university policy requires that all pending items (including, but not limited to, your tuition costs) are paid in full via your StudentPortal account by December 1st._

_Do not hesitate to reach out to our office with any questions or potential concerns._

_Best wishes—_

 

"Hunk," he croaks. "I don't."

"Huh?"

"I don't..." He chokes. "I d-don't wanna g-go."

He can see Hunk's face softening even further. "I know, buddy."

"We _all_ know, Lance," Rolo echoes sympathetically. He, too, kneels down, leaning his body against the couch.

Lance can feel his throat beginning to seize up, but it's almost as if his body is too tired to shed a single tear. He's already done it so much lately anyway, he wonders if he even has any crying juice left inside of him.

"I didn't m-mean it, b-before," he emphasizes. "I w-wanna stay. Here." He doesn't have very far to look around the apartment, but it's almost as if his entire life at the Garrison is standing there right in front of him.

Nyma, his first crush.

Rolo, who believes in him and buys him endless margaritas.

Pidge, Doc Holt's daughter who became a fast friend when she started in Lance's program last year.

And Hunk — Lance can't leave Hunk. He just _can't_.

"I wanna t-take grad photos w-with you, Hunky," he whispers. "I w-want you to walk me d-down the aisle—"

"Not quite how college graduations work, Lance," Pidge interrupts, but even _she_ looks a little bit misty-eyed behind the thick lenses of her coke-bottom glasses as she pushes to crouch down even closer to him.

"I'll talk to my dad," she says suddenly. Lance can see the resolve tightening in her tiny face, in her wrinkled-up nose and pinched lips. "He'll have some ideas, I'm sure."

"That's the spirit!" Rolo exclaims, cuffing her on her birdlike shoulder. She nearly falls over at the weight of it, and he winces apologetically. "Oops. Sorry, Pidge."

Hunk's dissolved into downright blubbering, but he still manages to get out a spluttering, "W-W-We're gonna f-f-figure this out, o-o-okay?"

Lance looks down at him. He wants to believe his best friend, _God_ , he does. But his situation couldn't be any farther from good. There's _no_ way in hell or high water that his mom and _abuelita_ will be able to pay off his spring bill without the d'Altea scholarship in time — the family had been relying on its generous funding to support Lance's education for years, after a good deal of Quinn's savings had already been invested in Marco's med school career. Not that Lance is about to point a single finger at any of his family members, though — they've always done everything that they can to get him to where he is today.

Except now, his younger sister Verónica is starting school, too. Vero's studying IR at State U. She's already got an internship in a local diplomat's office lined up for the spring semester, maybe even the summer if all goes well. She wants to save the world someday.

Another tuition bill to pay. Not enough money left to cover both. Because those "updated finances" that the bursar rattled off about in their e-mail? It's Lance's inheritance from his father's last will and testament...

...which he doesn't come into until  _after_ he graduates.

Lance's head drops into his hands — well, it tries to, anyway. He ends up missing his mark and plunking it down atop Hunk's meaty shoulder instead. And with that, he lets out a hopeless groan.

"Lance—"

"Huaaaggghhh."

"C'mon, Lancito—"

"Mheeemmmhhh—"

"Well, there's always Pell Grant matrimony."

Nyma's matter-of-fact voice cuts through his self-wallowing like a warm knife through chilled butter.

"Nyma, what're you—?" somebody — probably Rolo — begins.

Lance looks up from his best friend's shoulder just in time to see Nyma hop from her perch atop their dinky kitchen counter. It looks suspiciously shiny all of the sudden, as if somebody surreptitiously ran a clean sponge over its laminate surface.

"Pell Grant... _what_?" he asks slowly.

"Pell Grant matrimony," she repeats evenly. "Y'know. Get married. File taxes as an independent. Poof — you're Pell Grant eligible."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Hunk says frantically. "What're you — Nyma, you aren't  _seriously_ suggesting that, that _Lance_ —"

Lance stares bemusedly up at his lab mate. And Nyma — Nyma winks at him, her unfairly long eyelashes fluttering in his direction.

"Nyma," he says solemnly. "Will you do me the honor of becoming my—"

"No can do, partner," she cuts him off promptly. "I don't think my mans would be cool with me marrying somebody else."

"'Your mans?'" Pidge suddenly pipes up, as if this is the most intriguing part of the conversation at hand. "Who's your mans, Nyma?"

Rolo chuckles, as if he knows something that the rest of them don't. "Sorry, kid. Unfortunately, I'm not proper marriage material for you, either. But I'm sure you'd be a dope husband to some other lucky person."

Lance looks to Pidge. She immediately shakes her head, her fluffy honey-blond hair making moves as she does so. "I'm still a minor, McClain. And even if I wasn't, you _know_ I don't do dick."

There's an awkward little silence following  _that_ blunt statement... as everybody's heads swivel slowly but surely to face Hunk.

"Hey, if _you_ guys wanna be the ones to talk Shay into this," he starts, and it's immediately met by a resounding chorus of, "Oh, hell, no."

"Maybe Lance should get Dr. Holt's opinion before doing anything _too_ rash," Rolo suggests. He eyes Lance. "But I think the best thing we can do right now is let him get some shut-eye. Sounds like he's had a really long day."

"I agree completely," Hunk says stoutly. "Maybe don't expect him in your lab tomorrow morning, though. I have a strong feeling he isn't gonna wake up on the right side of the bed..."

"Yeah," Pidge agrees. "Who in their right mind drinks like a fish on a Sunday night, anyway?"

"It was her idea," Rolo says hastily, at the exact same time that Nyma says, "It was his idea."

Hunk coughs. "Uh, sure. Have a good night, you guys."

As soon as the door to the apartment slams shut behind them, Pidge rolls her eyes. "'My mans,'" she mocks. "Those two are an open fucking book—"

"Pidge," Hunk hisses. "Not in front of Lance! He still has that thing for her!"

"Who what for Lance," the boy in question slurs intelligently.

"Bye, Pidge," Hunk says meaningfully, tipping his blocky head in the direction of the exit. "Come back never!"

 

* * *

 

That night, Lance dreams. He dreams of opening every single drawer in Nyma's lab station and filling them up with wobbly green Jell-O. He dreams of Dr. Holt, wearing angel's wings and an impressive Santa Claus-like beard, raining hellfire on the bursar's office from heaven above. He dreams of the kinetic rainbow lights of Sal's illuminating the restaurant's trademark fishbowl margaritas, except these margaritas have actual fish in them...

...and the fish are blowing big, fat bubbles at him.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up at half-past noon with a hangover more fatal than the Black Plague, and — as he hurls a week's worth of greasy food truck lunches down the drain of the apartment's shoddy plumbing work, with Hunk hovering anxiously above him all of the while — suddenly fixates on one thing and one thing only from the previous night's misadventures.

"Hunk," he gasps through a mouthful of puke.

Hunk, his brown face far more green-tinged than usual, looks like he's about to be sick himself. He just nods, as if he doesn't trust himself to open up his mouth very far.

"I've gotta — _blergh!_  — find somebody to — _wuagh!_ — marry me!"


End file.
